October 2009

10/25/2009

Oh, unreliable narrators, how I love you. LIAR's protagonist, Micah, is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and I have been blown away by her.

I can't tell you much about this book, because just about anything I say will be a spoiler. I'm not going to tell you much more than the jacket does. Micah tells us immediately that she is a liar. She tells us that she is going to tell us, the readers, the truth. She promises. She says she means it. She lies.

Or does she?

Micah's boyfriend is brutally killed, and the series of lies that she has spun over the course of her life begin to pile up on top of her. She tells us a series of stories, each one beginning with a promise that this is the truth this time - yes, it really is. You are constantly torn between believing her and not believing her. Between loving her and hating her. And while you are torn, you are turning pages like a giant freak, racing and racing and racing to get to the end. Racing to try to figure out what is true and what isn't.

This book? Is (insert massive string of expletives here) awesome. This book is everything everyone has said it is. This book, with its much more accurate cover, is sitting on the shelf at my store waiting for me to sell it. Now that I have finally read it, I shall.

A couple of quibbles. The profanity is extremely erratic, and seems to show up mostly in the last quarter. I wish it had just been left out altogether OR been more consistent throughout. Also, just a few different word choices when describing sexual acts would have allowed me to handsell this to more teens; as it is it definitely skews to the upper end of the YA range. (At least in an independent bookseller handselling category.) Those quibbles are entirely from a bookseller perspective. As a reader? I wouldn't change a word. Larbalestier is doing a signing at my former employer, and I am incredibly sad that I won't be there for it. (Come to St. Louis!) But I'm definitely getting a hardcover copy signed, because I want this one on my shelf for keeps.

09/05/2009

Several years back, a certain bookseller named Melissa grabbed my arm and said, "Sarah! You've got to read this! Now!" She handed me the galley for THE WARRIOR HEIR, and I put it on my to-be-read pile. As usual, Melissa was dead-on. From the moment I started WARRIOR HEIR, I knew this was an author I was going to be reading for a long time to come. The HEIR books finished up last year, and it's one of the best contemporary fantasy trilogies I can name. When I heard Ms. Chima was trying her hand at high fantasy, I was very excited, but a little nervous. High fantasy is one of those genres where the story either really works, or really doesn't, and I've read my share of both sorts. It's always difficult when an author you love starts a new project, and you hope you'll love it as much as her older work, but there's a tiny trepidation in the back of your mind that you won't.
Here's the bottom line: THE DEMON KING rocks.
High fantasy is often driven by plot, but at the end of the day, if you don't fall in love with the main protagonists, it's game over. There's certainly plenty of plot to be had here, from scheming wizards to political chicanery, from street lord wars to ethnic blood feuds, and there's a rich thousand year history that serves as a glittering backdrop for it all. While the worldbuilding is lovely, what really seals the deal are her main characters. Han, a former thief, is trying to reform his criminal ways and take care of his mother and sister. While riding with his friend Dancer, a clan boy, they encounter a group of wizards setting fire to the grassland. They engage in a bit of a scuffle, and Han takes an amulet from charmcaster Micah Bayar, who is a bit like the Draco to Han's Harry. The amulet turns out to be more than just a family heirloom, as it exhibits terrifying power, and Han knows he must keep it out of the Bayars' hands.
As Han struggles to figure out what to do with the amulet, the princess heir of the Fells, Raisa, is in the midst of her own personal turmoil. Her mother, the Queen, is becoming more and more distant, making strange decisions on her behalf, and she is torn between Micah Bayar's forbidden affections (the princess cannot marry a wizard) and the attention of her handsome friend Amon, who is a member of her personal guard. As she lived for several years among her father's clan, she feels cloistered and trapped inside the palace walls, and makes a concerted effort to find out what's happening in her queendom behind the facade. Raisa hopes to be like her legendary ancestor, Hanalea, who saved the world by slaying the Demon King. Her coming of age ceremony looms, however, and that means a potential political marriage, which is a loathsome idea for her.
The novel follows the stories of Han and Raisa, usually swapping every other chapter between their points of view, and somehow Ms. Chima manages to weave their tales together in such a way that five hundred pages simply fly by. Both Han and Raisa are on a journey to become the adults they are meant to be, and both must find out, often at a price, whom they can trust. Along the way, Han and Raisa are surrounded by a host of secondary characters, from clansman to princes, and although the supporting cast is quite large, they all fit seamlessly into the framework, making the world of the seven realms seem all the more believable. Raisa and Han are both in relationships of some romantic degree at various points in the story, and while mature themes are alluded to, there is no explicit content. (That said, I believe this belongs in the young adult category; make of that what you will.) My only complaint is that I'm going to have to wait another year for the next installment of this trilogy! I am thrilled to have a new Chima series to recommend to my customers, and very grateful that both she and Hyperion books have put forth such a strong offering to the high fantasy lovers of the world.
Preorder THE DEMON KING from an independent bookstore!

08/12/2009

There will never be another John Hughes movie. I am incredibly sad about this. However, books like this one - heirs to John Hughes' oeuvre in all of the very best ways - go a long way toward alleviating some of that sadness.
This book may have the best title of any on the fall list. It's just darn catchy. Very memorable. I like the cover, too - I wish it were another bright color, because this book is really not a romance, but I'm honestly so grateful that it doesn't have a girl's face on it that I'm going to embrace the pink. (Actually, there aren't as many teen girl novels printed with pink covers as you'd think there were. And of those with pink covers, there are very, very few - if any - that are this good.)
Not only does it have the best title on the fall list, but it's hands down one of my favorite fall books.
Bea's father, a professor, accepts a new position at Johns Hopkins. This means that her family is moving from Ithaca, New York to Baltimore just in time for Bea to begin her senior year at a small private school where everyone, no doubt, had met in utero. She is not really looking forward to this, but is reacting to it and to the sudden weirdness in her parents' marriage with a fair amount of stoicism.
The book opens with a fantastically odd scene where her mother discovers a gerbil trying to chew its way through their patio furniture right before they move. Her mother seems overly eager for Bea to embrace the gerbil (who Bea names Goebbels) as a new member of the family, and is distraught when it is found dead just a few hours later. When Bea does not share her distress, her mother tells her You're not a girl. You're a robot! Bea isn't bothered by this so much as she is bothered by the way her mother has been behaving. They'd moved lots of times, but this particular move seems to be the straw that's broken her mother's back.
When Bea arrives at school the next morning, the girl (Anne) two seats away in Assembly is happy to see her. Finally I have a buffer between me and Ghost Boy, Anne says. She explains that Ghost Boy is Jonah, who's gone to school with her forever. In seventh grade someone started a rumor that he was dead, and when he showed up for school, the nickname sprang into use and never really went away. Jonah seems like a ghost of sorts to Bea - he speaks little, has no friends, sits alone at lunch.
And yet Bea is drawn to him in a way she can't explain.
To the bafflement of Anne and the other girls she gets to know, Bea and Jonah embark on one of THOSE friendships. The ones that start all of a sudden, usually in an odd sort of way (perhaps laced with some sarcastic or wry opening comments), gather strength quickly, and often implode. Usually more than once. Bea and Jonah begin when he tips her off to a late night radio show; when she listens, she learns that he is a regular caller. The world of this radio show becomes the first thing to bind them together and a thread that weaves through the rest of the book. As they learn more about one another - Jonah had a mentally handicapped twin who was killed in a car accident along with their mother; Bea's mother seems to be truly going off the deep end, becoming obsessed with chickens and falling over everything in sight - they become closer. And then one night Jonah shares a secret with Bea - a secret that will bring them together and push them apart, cause them to both love and hate one another, and, ultimately, decide their future.
I love the quirky yet intimate tone of Standiford's writing. She lets Bea let you in in some very interesting ways. One of my first occurs very early in the book. The night before school starts, Bea is suffering from insomnia, and deprived of the late night radio show she would listen to in Ithaca, begins instead to imagine herself dead. As a way to try to fall asleep. (This book just gets more awesome as it goes along. Who finds death soothing? Awesome Bea, that's who.)
I used lots of different death scenarios. There was the classic funeral scene: lying in my open coffin, dead but more beautiful than I ever looked in life, like Snow White in her crystal bier. Everyone I knew would pass by to gaze at me and cry. They should have appreciated me while I was alive. The world as they knew it will never be the same.The last mourner was always a boy, whatever boy I had a crush on at the time. He'd be a wreck, totally destroyed by my death. When he saw me in my coffin, he'd suddenly realize that he'd loved me all along. The other kids in school, the fools who had ignored me all year, were wrong, so very wrong. The injustice of it would overwhelm Crush Boy, who'd run into the street and throw himself in front of a truck.It was all very satisfying.
And Jonah...Jonah is the kind of character who seems like he's going to be a caricature before he even appears on the scene, thanks to how others view him. It is almost immediately obvious, however, that he is not. Standiford peels back Jonah's layers like an onion, and (just to continue the metaphor) with each subsequent layer Jonah becomes more insubstantial - but also, to Bea, more transparent. Their relationship feels so much more real than a lot of friendships in novels do. For me it was at times a little too real.
I had a Jonah once. His name was Chris. Unfortunately he's gone now - the world ultimately ended up being too much for him to bear. But the oddness and the fierceness and the insight and the wit that he brought into my life have stayed with me. Jonah reminded me of Chris, and for that I am especially grateful that I read this book. But anyone who's ever had a Jonah knows that Jonahs can be hard to love and that Jonahs can hurt you deeply. Bea learns both of these things very quickly, but she also learns that the deepest friendships - the ones where you are so open that you allow yourself to be hurt - are the friendships that change you forever.
I want more, more, more from this author.
Preorder it from an independent bookstore!

07/28/2009

I am very bad at sports. I am the last person you want on your team. I drop things. I stand in the outfield and stare up at the sun. I only have hand-eye coordination when I'm holding a video game controller. Given this fact, it may not come as much of surprise to you when I say that I don't like sports. I don't like watching them on tv, I don't like watching them in real life, and I am definitely not interested in reading about them.
A good writer, though, can write about something that you loathe, something that you're bored to tears by, or even something that scares the pants right off of you, and you can't stop reading. Catherine Murdock is such a writer, and in the same way that the cancelled-too-soon show Sports Night did, she tells a story that has sports in it that's ultimately not about sports. It doesn't matter that I can't tell a point guard from....another type of person on the court. It doesn't matter that I've never milked a cow. It definitely doesn't matter that I never had two guys in high school vying for my affections. What does matter is that D.J. Schwenk is a character that you care about, and you root for her in all ways: for her broken-yet-healing family, for her friendships with popular and unpopular alike, for her future at university, and for her future with the right person.
FRONT AND CENTER is the conclusion to the D.J. trilogy, and Murdock does an excellent job at weaving the many threads of this story together. There is something very warm and comforting about the Schwenk farm, and even when D.J. is at her lowest, it's easy to see how she can draw strength from her family. They're not perfect people, but they forgive each other's faults, and it's wonderful to see how their Red Bend community rallies around them after the difficult events of OFF SEASON. The old adage from writing classes in college is that good stories are about how a character changes, and D.J. truly does, becoming a little braver and a little more steady as the book goes on. D.J. balances a lot of strong personalities in her life, from Beaner to Brian to Amber to Win, and she has to find ways to love all these people and yet not give away too much of herself in the process. She is standing right on the line between teenager and grownup, and oh, that is a tough place to be.
Though the Schwenk family at large carries its share of scars, Murdock brings the funny at the right places: the Italian dinner with the "meatballi" scene is a scream, and the story of D.J.'s mom's prom shoe disaster makes every pair of awful dress shoes I've worn seem slightly less awful. As the trilogy comes to an end, we know a little bit of what D.J.'s future plans are going to be, but more importantly, we know that in her struggle to be a better daughter, to be a truer friend, to become the woman she is meant to be, she's headed in the right direction.
Preorder FRONT AND CENTER from an indie bookstore!